About Carl Hatton

Curiosity started early

I built my first PC when I was around seven years old. I was fascinated by what was inside the machine, not just what it could do. That curiosity became the thread running through everything that came later.

The first real project

Around 2006, the internet looked very different. File-sharing communities were huge, and websites often relied on services like RapidShare to host content. Users would upload collections consisting of dozens, sometimes hundreds, of download links.

The problem was simple: if even one file disappeared, entire downloads became useless. People spent hours posting messages asking uploaders to re-upload missing files.

I looked at the situation and thought: surely there must be a better way.

I paid a programmer $40 to build a website called Rapid-Hook.com. Users could paste a collection of RapidShare links into a form, and the website would automatically check which files were still available and which had been deleted.

It saved people a huge amount of time. To my surprise, the website became popular very quickly, reaching around 4,000 visits per day. Eventually I sold it for $400.

Looking back, selling it for ten times what I paid felt like a fantastic deal. Today I'd probably have held onto it longer.

Learning business through proxy websites

Around 2007, after moving away from file-sharing communities, I discovered a webmaster forum called DigitalPoint. At the time, proxy websites were everywhere. Schools blocked websites, social media, and games, while students searched for ways around those restrictions.

The business model was surprisingly straightforward: buy a cheap domain, buy hosting, install a proxy script, advertise it, build traffic, add advertising, and sell the website.

I started with one site. Then three. Then ten. Then twenty. Each project made a small profit, and I reinvested everything into the next one.

More importantly, I was learning about traffic, advertising, websites, automation, buying, selling, and most importantly, spotting opportunities.

I also learned another lesson that would follow me throughout my life: a good idea only stays unique for so long. Eventually competition increased, profits dropped, and the market changed. But by then I had already caught the entrepreneurial bug.

The t-shirt years

In 2012, after college and university, I found myself working for a t-shirt printing company. Within three weeks I was thinking: I could probably do this myself.

So that's exactly what I tried to do. I spent a year learning the trade, saving money, and buying equipment. Eventually I launched my own t-shirt printing business.

The biggest challenge wasn't printing. It was Amazon. Creating product listings was painfully slow. Every design needed mockups. Every variation needed images. Every listing needed titles, descriptions, keywords, and pricing.

It was repetitive, frustrating, and incredibly time-consuming. So I contacted the same programmer I had worked with years earlier. Together we built an online mockup and listing generator.

Instead of manually creating everything, I could upload artwork, position it once, enter product information, and generate complete Amazon-ready listings in seconds. What used to take hours now took minutes.

We started in October. By January 2013, the business had generated approximately £260,000 in turnover.

Building automation before AI

Around 2016, as the business grew, I hit another bottleneck. I could upload around 100 designs per day. That wasn't enough. I wanted to upload 100 designs per hour.

So we rebuilt the system from scratch. Instead of creating listings individually, I could upload hundreds of designs at once. The software automatically resized artwork, generated listing data, applied keyword rules, and prepared everything for publishing.

This was years before AI image generation and AI content tools became mainstream. Today it sounds normal. Back then it felt like magic.

The new system allowed me to upload more than 1,000 designs per day. The only problem was finding enough artwork to keep up with the machine.

Lockdown demand exploded

During lockdown in 2020, demand exploded. At our peak, we were selling around 1,000 t-shirts every single day.

For a while, everything felt unstoppable. Years of experimentation, automation, failures, lessons, and improvements had finally come together.

But business has a habit of changing when you least expect it. Amazon gradually shifted towards promoting more of its own catalogue and products. Visibility became harder to achieve. Listings that had once performed well slowly disappeared into the background.

By 2023, the business I had spent years building had effectively come to an end.

Not exactly glamorous

From 2023 onwards, the years after that weren't particularly glamorous. Today I'm a full-time delivery driver.

Life hasn't always gone the way I expected. Bad decisions, bad timing, and bad relationships have all played their part.

But life has a funny way of surprising you. In 2026 I met someone new, and she's awesome. Sometimes the best things arrive when you're not looking for them.

Why GoblinPass exists

I've always been security-conscious. Over the years I've been hacked more than once, and every experience reinforced the same lesson: convenience and security are rarely the same thing.

I've used password managers, looked at countless security tools, and experimented with different systems. And while I genuinely like LessPass, I always found myself wanting something more.

Something with more flexibility. More security options. More control. Something built the way I would build it.

On 11 June 2026, GoblinPass was only about a week old. The difference this time is that instead of hiring a freelance programmer, I used AI.

For the first time in my life, I could sit down, explain an idea, refine it, redesign it, test it, and watch it come to life almost immediately.